Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst

The composer, conductor and pianist Ferruccio Busoni (1866 1924) grew up bilingual as the child of an Italian musician and a German mother and spent the greater part of his life in Germany. Busoni's most famous work is the opera "Turandot." In addition to his compositional activities, Busoni was an influential music educator whose many students included film composer Giuseppe Becce, avant-garde composer Edgar Vaèrese, and composer of the "Threepenny Opera" Kurt Weill. With his paper "Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst" (Draft of a New Aesthetic of Musical Art), which was heavily disputed when the extended edition was published in 1916, Busoni put forward ideas on new tonal scales and a modernized understanding of music.